A Social Media Case Study on the Impact of Disinformation on Business and Consumers

Abstract

Social media sites are becoming more popular places for exchanging information, and the amount of information available on social media has facilitated how people communicate with each other. One of the significant challenges for social media users is to deal with information overload, misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. Consequently, improving the skills of IDL and awareness of information context is one of the best ways for social media users to deal with information overload and identify fake news. However, the support of social media users is inconsistent which has led to many of them dealing poorly with misinformation and fake news.This research seeks to study and identify the impact on businesses and consumers of fake news and reviews on social media sites and seek to understand the role social media users play in combating fake news. Additionally, the study aims to understand the level of social media users' information and digital literacy skills. Our main results show that information overload, fake news, and reviews impact businesses and consumers.